The Catholic Church includes
fifteen books and portions of books in their Old Testament which are not
accepted by Protestants. These are, 1st Esedras, 2nd
Esedras, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Eccle­siasticus (Sirach), Baruch,
Letter of Jeremiah, Susana, additions to Daniel: chapter 13 Prayer of Azariah,
and chapter 14, Bel and the Dragon; Prayer of Manassesh, two Books of
Maccabees and fragments of Esther (10:4; 16:24). These are generally called “Apocrypha”
by Protestants and “Deutercanonical” by Catholics. In addition, Eastern Orthodox readers include 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees
and Psalm 151.

I.These books are all in the Old Testament. Christians are under
the New Testament, not the old. (2Cor 3:6; Heb 8:8-13-15). Their value is primarily
historical.

II.They were never in the Hebrew Old Testament canon.

Most of them were written
in Greek and included in the Septuagint in Egypt.

God gave the
Jews care of the Old Testament writings (Rom. 3:1-2; 9:4)

Romans 3:1-2What
advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? 2
Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of
God.

The Hebrew text contained 22 books divided into the Law,
the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luke 24:44-45). There were 22 because some of the
books were combined.

The twelve smaller prophets, from Hosea to Malachi, were for
convenience uniformly united in one volume. The small books of Ruth and
Lamentations were attached to the larger works mentioned, and Ezra and Nehemiah
were long reckoned as a single book.

Jesus
identified the Old Testament as extending from Able to Zacharias (Mat. 23:35).
Able was killed in Genesis, chapter 4, and Zacharias was killed in the last
(2Chronicles 24:20-21). The Maccabees books were written centuries later.

III.Inspired writers did not quote the apocryphal books as inspired.

The New Testament has scores of quotations from the
Old Testament, even citing authors by name, but no similar quotations from the
apocryphal books.

The New Testament also quoted pagan writings
(Epimenides, Menander and Aratus –Acts 17:28) and books from pseudapegraphal
writings (Jude 1:9, 14-15; Enoch 1:9) not included in Catholic Bibles. In fact,
they seem not to have even been aware of the apocryphal books.

IV.They contain no fulfilled prophesies identifying them as
inspired.

V.They have nothing of any serious doctrinal import that would add
anything significant to the revelation we have, and in some cases they conflict
with inspired scripture.

2Maccabees 12:44 is sometimes cited
concerning praying for the dead but it only cites the prevailing tradition (cf.
Mark 7:8, 9, 13) and claims no inspiration (2Mac. 15:38).

44 For if he
were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have
been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. 45 But if
he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep
in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement
for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.

This conflicts with Jesus’ teaching
that after death there is no changing to a better place. Luke 16:20-31.

25 But
Abraham said, `Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good
things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here,
and you are in anguish. 26 And besides all this, between us and
you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from
here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.'

VI.Some are fanciful in nature, more like pagan myths.

Tobit
6:1-8 Tells of a fish that tries to eat him. He catches it and is told that
the liver, when burned drives away devils, and by using the gall to anoint a
man with white on his eyes will heal him.

Bell and the Dragon, 1:27. Daniel
kills the dragon by feeding it cakes of pitch, fat and hair. Then Daniel is
put into a den of lions for 7 days and Habakuk is transported to Babylon by his hair to feed him (1:36).

VII.Some of the Apocrypha indicates it was not intended to be
considered inspired

2Mac 15:38 If it is well
told and to the point, that is what I myself desired; if it is poorly done and
mediocre, that was the best I could do.

2Mac 2:23all this, which has
been set forth by Jason of Cyrene in five volumes, we shall attempt to
condense into a single book. 24 For considering the flood of numbers
involved and the difficulty there is for those who wish to enter upon the
narratives of history because of the mass of material, 25 we have aimed to
please those who wish to read, to make it easy for those who are inclined to
memorize, and to profit all readers.

They indicate that prophecy had
ceased.

1 Mac 9:2727So
was there a great affliction in Israel, the like whereof was not since the
time that a prophet was not seen among them.

1 Mac 4:4646And
laid up the stones in the mountain of the temple in a convenient place, until
there should come a prophet to shew what should be done with them.

1 Maccabees 14:4141
Also that the Jews and priests were well pleased that Simon should be their
governor and high priest for ever, until there should arise a faithful
prophet;

"Thus says the LORD," which
occurs so frequently in the Old Testament, is conspicuously absent from the
apocryphal books.

VIII.Historically they have always been regarded as doubtful

Sometimes they were placed separately or omitted in
different Septuagint texts. Thus, they were omitted from the Palestinian
Canon.

Even the Christian era copies of the Greek
Septuagint differ in their selection of included books. The three oldest
complete copies we have of the Greek Old Testament include different additional
books.

Codex
Sinaiticus, (4th century
AD.), omits 2Maccabees and Baruch, but includes Psalm 151, 1Esdras and 4Maccabees.

Codex
Vaticanus, (4th century
AD.), omits 1 & 2Maccabees and The Prayer of Manassah, but includes Psalm
151 and 1Esdras.

B.Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, categorically
rejected the Apocrypha as uninspired.

Against Apion, (Book 1, §8, ¶38)“Wehave not, therefore, a multitude of books disagreeing and
conflicting with one another; [as the Greeks have] but we haveonly
twenty-two, which contain the record of all time and are justly held to
be divine.

(39) and
of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the
origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of
three thousand years;

(40) but
as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of
Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote
down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books
contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life.

(41) It
is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, buthath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our
forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets
since that time;

(42) and
how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation, is evident by
what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been
so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to
make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately
and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines,
and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them.”

C.Philo, the 1st century Jew, wrote extensively on the
OT, but never quoted from the apocrypha.

[Note: both Josephus and Philo wrote before the council of Jamnia in
90AD.]

D.Melito of Sardis (c. 160 AD), the first Christian
writer to give the list of Old Testament books, preserved in the writings of
Eusebius. Melito gives the list as the 22 books of the Hebrew Old Testament.

E.Origen (c. 230 AD) also names the 22 books as the Old Testament.

F.Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 325 AD) explicitly states that
the books of the Apocrypha had sanction for reading only and were not to be
considered part of the canon of scripture

After listing the 22 Old Testament books and the 27 books of the New
Testament, Athanasius writes,

"These are the fountains of salvation . . . In these alone is
proclaimed the doctrine of godliness."

The
leading Greek fathers who followed Athanasius in defining the Old Testament
canon as 22 books were Cyril of Jerusalem, Anastasius of Antioch, Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus.

Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 343), catalogued the proper
canon of books of the Old Testament, and did not include the Apocrypha.

H.Jerome (c. 400 AD) says:

“As, then, the church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of the
Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical scriptures, so
let is also read these two volumes [Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus]
for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of
the church.”

"whatever is beside
these is to be placed in the Apocrypha, and is to be read only for edification,
... not to establish the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines."

In the book The Scholastical History of the Canon, John Cosin
cites 52 major ecclesiastical writers from the 8th to the 16th centuries who
affirm the view of Jerome (c 400AD), which is to separate the Apocrypha
from the Old Testament in terms of authority for doctrine.

Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome (c. 600 AD),
wrote:

“We are not acting irregularly, if, from the books, though not
canonical, yet brought out for the edification of the church, we bring
forward testimony. Thus Eleazar in the battle smote and brought down an
elephant, but fell under the very beast and was killed (I Mac 6:46).”

J.Cardinal Cajetan was the opponent of Luther in the 1500s. He
wrote Commentary on all the Authentical Historical Books of the Old Testament
and dedicated the book to Clement VII. He says,

"Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the
Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit and the books of the
Macabees) are counted by Jerome out of the canonical books and placed
amongst the Apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as is plain
from the Prologus Galeatus."

K.John Wycliffe
(c 1370 AD), Luther (1546 AD) and Miles Coverdale put the
Apocrypha at the end of their bibles.

History of inclusion of
the apocrypha

At the end of the fourth century Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, the
most learned biblical scholar of his day, to prepare a standard Latin version
of the Scriptures (Latin Vulgate). In the Old Testament Jerome followed the
Hebrew canon and by means of prefaces called the reader's attention to the
separate category of the apocryphal books. Subsequent copyists of the Latin
Bible were not careful to transmit Jerome's prefaces, and during the medieval
period the Western Church generally regarded these books as part of the holy
Scriptures. In 1546 the Council of Trent decreed that the canon of the Old
Testament includes them (except the Prayer of Manasseh and 1 and 2 Esdras).
Subsequent editions of the Latin Vulgate text, officially approved by the Roman
Catholic Church, contain these books incorporated within the sequence of the
Old Testament books.

Eastern Orthodox Churches recognize several other books as authoritative.
Editions of the Old Testament approved by the Greek Orthodox Church contain,
besides the Deuterocanonical books, 1 Esdras, Psalm 151, the Prayer of
Manasseh, and 3 Maccabees, while 4 Maccabees stands in an appendix.

In addition to the 150 psalms of the Hebrew Bible during the
inter-testament period other psalms were composed in Hebrew and in other
languages. One of these, which celebrates David slaying Goliath, is appended as
Ps 151 in Greek manuscripts.

The earliest copies of the English Bible that excluded the Apocrypha are
some Geneva Bibles printed in 1599 mainly in the Low Countries. However, the
titles of the apocryphal books occur in the table of contents at the beginning
of the edition, recognizing that while they were considered questionable, they
should still be mentioned.

Many printings of the King James Version appeared in London and Cambridge without the Apocrypha; copies lacking the disputed books are dated 1616, 1618,
1620, 1622, 1626, 1627, 1629, 1630, and 1633. Like the copies of the Geneva
Bible of 1599, these seems to have been the work of publishers who wished to
satisfy a growing demand for less bulky and less expensive editions of the
Bible who omitted them because they lacked authority as scripture.